Is it 2016?
So let’s, for today, throw out all of the arguments about the legitimacy of the 2016 election. Let’s ignore the Russian interference, and possible hacking into our electoral processes. And let’s ignore the impact of Director Comey’s actions in particular, and the FBI in general. Let’s look at the voter turnout, and what voters were willing to accept.
We know that Hillary Clinton was a weakened candidate. The Sanders campaign, the continuing email scandal, and the years of Republican hard work to undercut her image took their toll. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said this about the impact of the endless Benghazi hearings:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”
We also know that Donald Trump was an “outlier” candidate, beyond the boundaries of normal political decency and the Republican Party itself.
A significant portion of the American population were willing to accept the absolute “political incorrectness” of Donald Trump. They were willing to accept his abusive and lascivious attitude towards women, his insulting and bullying actions towards those he saw as enemies, and his outright lies about his own life. They knew, and know today, that they are making this choice; they see it as a way to “Make America Great Again” or more specifically, take America back to what it was like seventy years ago.
We also know that a large portion of Americans were turned off by the entire campaign. The old adage, “hold your nose and vote,” didn’t play for many, particularly groups that generally vote Democratic, and they decided to skip the entire process. Bernie Sanders voters were mad, young people were disenchanted, and there was an undercurrent of “malaise.” The fact that Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner were tied into the “Clinton Family” negated much of the impact of Trump’s transgressions. It was ugly every direction you turned.
President Trump is using the Kavanaugh nomination to try to recreate the atmosphere of 2016. He is trying to brand Democrats: particularly a woman – Nancy Pelozi, and a Jewish man – Chuck Schumer – as “…destroying a good man and his family to gain what they couldn’t earn at the polls.” Trump believes he can drag this election into the same mud bath that he found in 2016. In that ugly hole, he’s the best!!
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the President mocked sexual assault victim Christine Blasey-Ford in a rally this week. He is not just reading the “tea-leaves,” he’s also seeing polling data showing that the Kavanaugh crisis is firing up his base. He has found the critical appeal: your “white son” could be falsely accused, and destroyed, by the Pelozi-Schumer Democrats!
Trump thinks he can save the Republican Congress by putting himself “on the ticket.” By making every Congressional Republican vote a vote for Trump, he believes he can bring out his base, and maintain a Congressional majority. Kavanaugh gives Trump the perfect stand-in, particularly after the anger-filled display he made in the last Congressional hearing.
The Trump voters will turn out, just as Republicans always do. It was a Democratic “pipe dream” to believe they wouldn’t. But that is not the determinate factor in the mid-term elections. The question is now, and always was, will Democrats turn out?
Will Democrats take the passion generated in the special elections of the past eighteen months, and channel it into the November polls? Or will they allow the ugliness of the Kavanaugh situation, win or lose, to drag the election back into the “everyone’s dirty as usual” mindset that will kill their turnout.
Democrats needed to fight Kavanaugh with every weapon “at their disposal” in order to keep faith with their base, and maybe, to actually win the fight. The vulnerability of Roe v Wade, the Affordable Care Act, and all of the other Democratic foundations, required that action. And the fact that the Republicans have orchestrated a “whitewash” of an FBI investigation will make it an issue in the future.
But to be honest, from the Democrats point of view, the Kavanaugh nomination needs to be over, one way or the other. There are four weeks left before the election, a lifetime in political terms; and Democrats need to get back to the battle of healthcare, jobs, children at the border, and the failed Trump promises of the past two years. That’s a better strategy to fire up turnout, because when Democrats show up, they win.
